A.I. = N.O.

 Do you see AI as a blessing or a curse for you as a writer?

I struggled a little to come up with something more than:

It's a curse. Full stop.

I think AI as a concept will prove to be an invaluable tool in the future. It's here to stay and can and will improve our lives in immeasurable ways through the tech sector, medicine, and every science on Earth. For creative pursuits? It's a death knell.

Why Silicon Valley is so obsessed with an AI takeover of creativity is not too hard to discern: they have none themselves and want an easy cop-out to feel creative and to devalue actual human creativity.

Writing is not unique in the battle lines being drawn. There are deep-pocketed companies with the goal of creating AI-generated art in all its forms, from music to painting to writing of every discipline. It's a continuation of the devaluing of art we've seen in the digital age. Music has become something an entire generation places almost no value in. Everything is at our fingertips, for virtually no cost. (none at all if they're on their parent's Spotify account) 

There's almost no way to talk about, let alone push back against, the devaluing of art without sounding like a cranky old man. In my day (yes, I said it) you had to save money to go buy a record or a book. You went to a retail store where they could physically only carry a fraction of what was available. As new books come out, they replace older books on the shelf.

Now, with everything available all the time and for pennies, that entertainment or art buying dollar is spread increasingly thin. And artists are suffering. And if those companies can remove the artist entirely...and subsequently keep all the money for themselves, well that's just good business, right?

But the result is that no one can make a living creating, then nobody will do it anymore. 

AI has benefits I cannot imagine. Creative writing is not one of them. The only ones it benefits are corporations and people who can't write a book. They want the easy way out. That goes for creating book covers and using fake AI-generated narrators.

It can be a tool in the box for things like graphic design, but to wholesale eliminate the humans from the equation, you end up with an end product that lacks humanity. When that happens, it's a short slide into people disconnecting with the art, then not choosing it and then we end up in a world without the arts and that's nowhere I'd ever want to live.